50 Fun Facts About Pancake

What leavening agent gives American and Scottish pancakes their thick, fluffy texture?

Baking powder is the usual raising agent in American and Scottish pancake batter; French crêpes skip it, which is why they come out thin enough to roll.

Which North American name for a pancake means a baked oat bar in Britain?

Flapjack is a far older word than the oat bar it names in Britain: Shakespeare's Pericles promises 'puddings and flap-jacks', and oats came into it only in the 1930s.

Which old US coin gives its name to small pancakes only two to three inches across?

Silver dollar pancakes take their name from the old dollar coin, though at two to three inches they run a little bigger than the coin itself.

Historically, why were pancakes made on Shrove Tuesday?

"To use up fat and eggs before Lent": rich foods were given up for the fast, so households cooked them into pancakes; the French name Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday moves each year because it always falls 47 days before which festival?

Easter sets the date, and because Easter follows the moon, Pancake Day can land anywhere from 3 February to 9 March.

In the legend behind Olney's pancake race, what sound sent a housewife running, frying pan still in hand?

A church bell, the story goes: in 1445 a housewife busy with her pancakes heard it ring for the shriving service and ran to church, pan and all.

Since 1950, Olney's pancake racers have competed against the town of Liberal in which US state?

Kansas is home to Liberal, whose women race on the same day; the two towns then compare times across the Atlantic to name an international winner.

Ancient Greek tagenites (pancakes) used wheat flour, olive oil, curdled milk and which sweetener?

Honey sweetened tagenites, which took their name from the tagenon, the frying pan they were cooked in.

The word crêpe comes from a Latin word for curled that also gave English which word?

Crisp and crêpe both descend from the Latin crispus, curled; in Old English crisp still meant curly, and only later came to mean brittle.

On La Chandeleur, French custom says flipping a crêpe brings a prosperous year if your other hand holds what?

A gold coin held while flipping is said to bring prosperity; in one old version the coin was then rolled in the crêpe and kept on top of a wardrobe until the next Candlemas, 2 February.

A galette bretonne, the savoury pancake of Brittany, is made from which flour?

Buckwheat flour, called blé noir or sarrasin in Brittany, gives the galette its dark colour and makes the batter naturally gluten-free; the classic filling is ham, cheese and an egg.

Which drink is the traditional partner for galettes in a Breton crêperie?

Cider is the traditional drink of Brittany, and crêperies pour it into a bowl or cup rather than a glass.

Crêpes Suzette are flambéed with a sauce including a liqueur flavoured with what?

Orange: the sauce caramelises sugar with orange juice and an orange liqueur such as Grand Marnier; waiter Henri Charpentier claimed to have invented it by accident in Monte Carlo in 1895.

Maslenitsa, Russia's week-long blini festival, takes its name from the Russian word for which food?

Butter, maslo in Russian, names the week, which ends with a straw effigy of Lady Maslenitsa going up in flames to see off winter.

Traditional Russian blini differ from crêpes mainly because their batter contains what?

Yeast: traditional blini are raised with a yeasted batter, making them thicker and spongier than an unleavened crêpe; they are often topped with sour cream and caviar.

Dutch pannenkoeken are traditionally cooked with bacon or with slices of which fruit?

Apple slices are cooked into the batter of an appelpannenkoek, and in the Netherlands these large pancakes can be the main course, not just dessert.

Poffertjes, the tiny puffed Dutch pancakes, are cooked in what?

A dimpled pan shapes them, and the cook flips each one with a fork while the batter is still half set, which keeps the middle soft.

The Japanese savoury pancake okonomiyaki takes its name from words meaning what?

'How you like it' and 'grilled': okonomi means 'as you like' and yaki means grilled, fitting a dish whose batter takes whatever fillings the cook prefers.

What is the main vegetable in okonomiyaki?

Cabbage, finely shredded, is the bulk of an okonomiyaki; Osaka-style mixes it into the batter while Hiroshima-style layers it on top of a thin crêpe base.

Japanese dorayaki are two small pancakes sandwiched around what filling?

Sweet red bean paste, called anko, fills dorayaki, the favourite food of the robot cat Doraemon, who falls for any trap baited with them.

Injera, the spongy sour flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, is traditionally made from which grain?

Teff, a tiny Ethiopian highland grain, is fermented into the sour batter; injera doubles as plate and spoon, with stews ladled onto it and torn pieces used to scoop them up.

A masala dosa is a thin South Indian rice-and-lentil crêpe folded around a spiced filling of what?

Potatoes, cooked into a spiced curry, fill a masala dosa; the batter of rice and black gram is left to ferment before it is spread on a hot griddle.

Jianbing, China's popular street breakfast, is a crêpe topped with an egg and what crispy element?

A fried cracker, the thin wafer called baocui, is folded inside the egg-topped crêpe with sweet bean and chilli sauces; Tianjin's jianbing guozi wraps a fried dough stick instead.

Hungarian palacsinta gets its name, via Romanian, from which Latin word?

Placenta was Latin for a flat cake, and anatomists later borrowed it, as 'uterine cake', for the organ; the pancake's name reached Hungarian through Romanian plăcintă.

The shredded caramelised pancake of Austria is named after which ruler?

Emperor Franz Joseph I gives Kaiserschmarrn its name; in one telling his wife Elisabeth found the dessert too rich, so he finished her portion as well as his own.

In Sweden, pancakes are traditionally eaten for lunch on which day of the week, after pea soup?

Thursday is said to go back to Catholic times, when Friday was a fast day, so a filling pea soup the day before made sense; the pancakes joined the menu later.

Toutons, rounds of bread dough fried in pork fat and served with molasses, come from which part of Canada?

Newfoundland's toutons were a breakfast dish for a reason: bread dough was mixed in the evening and left to rise overnight, so by morning there was dough to fry before the day's baking.

South African pannekoek are traditionally served with what?

Cinnamon sugar and lemon is the classic topping: the thin pannekoek is sprinkled, squeezed with lemon and rolled up, a fixture of church fetes and rainy days.

In Australia and New Zealand, small thick pancakes are known as what?

Pikelets are small thick pancakes in Australia and New Zealand, but in parts of England the same word means a thin crumpet.

A Dutch baby pancake differs from an ordinary pancake in that it is what?

Baked in the oven in a hot pan, the eggy batter puffs up without any raising agent, then sinks soon after it comes out.

The 'Dutch' in Dutch baby pancake is thought to be a corruption of which word?

Deutsch, the Germans' word for German, is the likely origin: the dish is a German pancake, and a daughter of Seattle café owner Victor Manca is said to have garbled the name.

A johnnycake, also called a hoecake, is a flatbread made from what?

Cornmeal is the base: Native Americans taught European settlers to make these flatbreads, and Rhode Island claims the modern johnnycake as its own.

Which brand, launched in 1889, is described as the first ready-mix pancake flour?

Aunt Jemima began in 1889 as a self-rising flour from a Missouri mill, and co-owner Chris Rutt took the name from a minstrel-show song, Old Aunt Jemima.

Nancy Green cooked pancakes as the living face of a brand at which 1893 event?

Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was where Nancy Green, born into slavery in Kentucky, first cooked pancakes in character; several Black women followed her in the role over the next century.

In 2021 the pancake-mix brand long fronted by a stereotyped Black cook was renamed what?

Pearl Milling Company was the St. Joseph, Missouri mill that produced the original 1889 mix; Quaker Oats revived the name for the rebrand in 2021.

Bisquick was inspired by a chef who kept pre-mixed biscuit dough on ice so he could bake fresh where?

A train dining car: a General Mills sales executive praised the chef's fresh biscuits, learned his trick, and the company turned it into a boxed mix sold from 1931.

The chemical leavener in a box of pancake mix is a blend of a carbonate or bicarbonate and what?

A weak acid, such as cream of tartar or sodium acid pyrophosphate, reacts with the bicarbonate when the batter is wetted and heated, releasing the carbon dioxide that makes the bubbles.

Which Canadian province is the world's largest producer of maple syrup?

Quebec makes roughly seven-tenths of the world's maple syrup, and its producers' federation stockpiles surplus barrels in a strategic reserve.

About how many litres of maple sap must be boiled down to make one litre of syrup?

About 40: maple sap is only a few percent sugar, so nearly all of it has to be boiled away, and the exact figure swings from 20 to 50 with the sap.

Thieves in the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist refilled the emptied barrels with what?

Water went into the emptied barrels, and the C$18.7 million theft came to light only when an inspector climbing the stacks nearly fell from one that proved empty.

IHOP, the International House of Pancakes, opened its first restaurant in 1958 where?

California: the first International House of Pancakes opened in the Los Angeles area in July 1958, and co-founder Albert Kallis's wife Trudy is said to have thought up the name on the night she gave birth.

In June 2018, IHOP briefly renamed itself IHOb, with the 'b' standing for what?

Burgers: the IHOb stunt was a marketing campaign for the chain's hamburgers, meant to shake the idea that IHOP was only a place for breakfast.

What is a semla, Sweden's traditional Shrove Tuesday treat?

A cream-filled cardamom bun: the semla is a spiced wheat bun with almond paste and whipped cream; a popular story, now doubted, has King Adolf Frederick dying in 1771 after a feast that ended with them.

Which Jewish festival is traditionally celebrated with potato pancakes called latkes?

Hanukkah is celebrated with latkes, grated potato pancakes fried in oil, recalling the oil that burned for eight days in the rededicated Temple.

In Berlin, the word Pfannkuchen means which treat instead of a pancake?

A jam doughnut is what Berliners call a Pfannkuchen, the treat much of Germany calls a Berliner; for a real pancake, Berlin says Eierkuchen, egg cake.

Korean savoury pancakes made from batter and vegetables or seafood are called what?

Buchimgae is the general name for Korean batter pancakes fried with vegetables or seafood; pajeon, the scallion version, is the best known abroad.

What is the traditional running attire required of contestants in the Olney pancake race?

Apron and headscarf are compulsory, recalling the housewife of the legend, and each runner must toss her pancake at the start and again at the finish.

Chinese pancakes such as cong you bing differ from Western pancakes because they use what?

"Dough rather than batter": a scallion pancake is a kneaded dough rolled thin, scattered with scallions, coiled and flattened before frying, which gives it flaky layers.

Which jam is a traditional filling for Hungarian palacsinta?

Apricot jam is a traditional filling for a rolled palacsinta; the savoury Hortobágyi version is stuffed with stewed meat and covered in paprika sauce.

What is the bowl-shaped fermented rice-flour pancake of Sri Lanka and Kerala called?

A hopper, or appam, is cooked in a small wok-shaped pan, so the fermented batter of rice flour and coconut milk sets into a bowl; an egg hopper has an egg cooked in the middle.